The African Youth Peer Review Committee (Zimbabwe Chapter) has engaged Parliamentarians from different portfolio committees to advocate and sign the call for a Fossil Fuel Free Future.
Several countries in the Global South recently initiated a Parliamentarians’ Call for a Fossil Fuel Free Future (FFFF) and are inviting their colleague legislators from all over the world to join them.
The call is urging governments, public institutions, and corporations to do more, commit to, and pursue transformational policies and plans to ensure 100 percent access to renewable energy globally, support economies to shift away from fossil fuels, and accelerate the development of renewable and clean energy systems.
This comes at a time when climate change is reaching catastrophic levels with a very limited time for the world to make it stop.
Part 1 of the Assessment Report number 6 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released last August 2021 confirms that the planet has already warmed to an average of 1.09 degrees Celsius.
The African Youth Peer Review Committee Coordinator from Zimbabwe Eric Morgan Moyo said currently almost 200 legislators from the Global South have signed the call.
“This comes at a time when some countries in the Global North including Germany and the United Kingdom are reverting back to using coal due to the current energy crisis globally,” he said.
Moyo said the enactment of national budgets and fiscal policies that will support this swift and just transition nationally and globally is also key to call.
“The legislators connect this by calling for the timely and adequate delivery of public, additional and non-debt creating climate finance as part of the obligations of rich, industrialized countries to address climate change.”
He said Parliamentarians also called for an end to a new expansion of oil, gas, and coal production in line with the best available science as outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and United Nations Environment Program.
“They highlighted that existing oil, gas, and coal has to be phased out in a manner that is fair and equitable, taking into account the responsibilities of countries for climate change and their respective capacity to transition,” said Moyo.
The legislators further called for the forging of new international commitments and treaties complementing the Paris Agreement to address the urgency of a swift and just transition away from fossil fuel energy and build democratic, renewable, safe energy systems for all people and communities in line with the goal of keeping global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius and preventing climate catastrophe
“Countries all over the world have been experiencing its devastating impacts and we are facing even greater risks and harm in the years to come. To keep on track with fulfilling the goal of the Paris Climate Agreement for global temperatures to remain below 1.5 degrees Celsius, we need a swift, equitable and just transition out of fossil fuels,” he said.
